SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[FixTesteR]

So it needs to be decided what definition we are to go with: the one that says if you become stupid, horrified, or spooked, you are actually helpless, or the one that limits helplessness to immobility. My take would be to look at it broadly, and ask how the gameplay is affected in each case, and how either way renders other spells more/less useful. Should a caster have Remove Fear always on, or can he do away with such protections since contingency will bail him out in the (un)likely event anyway?

[Bartimaeus]

The way I'm currently seeing it, from the list of states that kjeron listed, being "helpless" is essentially a matter of whether or not the affected character is fully disabled + auto-hit when attacked. Neither fear, berserk, confusion, feeblemindedness, entanglement et al. are considered to be "helplessness", even though those states take away control of the character and render them incapable of performing normal actions...but none of those states make it so you're automatically hit like the states that do actually trigger the "helplessness" state. Even though this is not necessarily ideal, it is at least relatively consistent.

[subtledoctor]

I think the real issue is that Contingency doesn’t give you as fine-grained control as it should. IIRC it is largely hard-coded, though. 

[Lianos]

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

but none of those states make it so you're automatically hit like the states that do actually trigger the "helplessness" state. Even though this is not necessarily ideal, it is at least relatively consistent.

I can see the point. It is the view of a programmer and not a player. But I'm fine as long as it's consistent on some level.

How I came up with the "issue": After a long and difficult fight a Cloudkill finally killed the last enemy. I was happy until I realised the PC is standing feebleminded in the corner, despite my overly clever approach to cast a Break Enchanment via contigency when "Helpless" occures. Annoying. All the other stuff is at least time-limited, but this scenario forced me to reload - the price of playing solo I guess

 

3 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I think the real issue is that Contingency doesn’t give you as fine-grained control as it should.

This. And the lack of a description how it works in the first place.

Edited October 9, 2021 by Lianos

[kjeron]

5 hours ago, Lianos said:

Regardless how low the intelligence is, lifeforms will still react because of reflexes. They would try to escape from the pain when beaten up or even strike back. These reactions are not tied to intelligence.

Since the game takes a different approach here (starting at the definition of intelligence) that renders the affected character incapable of performing any action, I think he is indeed helpless in terms of gameplay mechanics.

Morale failure still functions while feebleminded, which is what the game uses to handle that type of instinctual reaction.

They are still very much capable of trying to escape or retaliate, unless you've buffed them such that they no longer fear death.

[Bartimaeus]

46 minutes ago, Lianos said:

I can see the point. It is the view of a programmer and not a player. But I' fine as long as it's consistent on some level.

How I came up with the "issue": After a long and difficult fight a Cloudkill finally killed the last enemy. I was happy until I realised the PC is standing feebleminded in the corner, despite my overly clever approach to cast a Break Enchanment via contigency when "Helpless" occures. Annoying. All the other stuff is at least time-limited, but this scenario forced me to reload - the price of playing solo I guess

 

This. And the lack of a description how it works in the first place.

I would be totally in fair of adding another condition that bridged the gap between the two, but unfortunately not up to me. And you're not kidding about the lack of a description - I only had a vague idea of what it meant myself. It would be a bit of a struggle to explain what "helplessness" is using only in-universe terms and writing.

[subtledoctor]

I very vaguely recall that it might be able to add contingency triggers, on the EEs. But it seemed a bit fragile. IIRC. 

As far as Feeblemind: FWIW I think it should have a duration. Making it permanent is too strong for 6th-level magic IMHO. Okay I know, there is Flesh to Stone, but I’ve opined elsewhere that FtS should also have a limited duration. Basically all these thing should have a duration unless 1) they are like 8th-/9th-level magic, or 2) they are supplemented by a Permanency spell. 

Yes I know that Permanency doesn’t exist in the game. But it doesn't need to; a 5-turn Feeblemind is a death sentence in this game. Unless you hit an edge case like the one Lianos described, in which case you go make a cup of tea and then come back and continue playing. What would the downside in limiting its duration?

[Bartimaeus]

20 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

What would the downside in limiting its duration?

I'm not sure, I guess I don't feel too strongly either way, especially since I think I've been feebleminded a grand total of once, maybe twice in all of my days of playing. Honestly, I didn't even know enemy spellcasters ever used it.

SR V1.3.600 released, should fully support EE 2.6 games now.

Fixes:

1. The Genie Bottle was not always summoning the SR Efreeti as it should (...or even the normal efreeti).
2. Animal Summoning I's Bats could go wacko with their Swarming ability, should be averted now.
3. Removed a bad condition for Demi's Revised Saves that prevented it from being installed on EE games for no good reason (even if you had it enabled to install).
4. Deva weapons now visually register as swords (...even though they're not supposed to be - there aren't any other options, so it's either nothing or swords).
5. Hopefully removed all invalid spell strings for BG1EE games.
6. Friends, Protection from Petrification, and Detect Alignment were getting funky placements in the High Hedge and Sorcerous Sundries stores.
7. Dispelling Screen's scroll never got set to learn the correct spell when I decided to ADD_SPELL it (i.e. give it a dynamic location).
8. Mental Domination (divine) no longer uses the "controlled by cleric" version of the effect, which could allow attacks to be made against the creature without breaking the spell (contrary to its description).
9. Sunscorch was giving undead immunity to Sunscorch after the first cast, so additional casts would inexplicably not work.
10. The issue with a number of spells (and their scrolls) not breaking invisibility/sanctuary in the latest version of the EEs (2.6) should be solved.
11. Added back a missing spellstate on Prismatic Mantle for SCS, and also made sure it cast the right version of the spell for the party to prevent accidental self-hits.
12. A handful of spells did not state that they do not stack when they do not - now they do say that in their descriptions.
13. Updated a number of spells to actively state their non-stackability in the combat log when attempting to stack them for ToBEx games (let me know if this becomes an issue, ToBEx players...).

Changes:

1. Revised Goodberry: 3 berries instead of 5, but start at 5 HP healed at level 1 and scale up to 10 at 15th level. Three times as much healing and more action-economic to use.
2. Gust of Wind has a 10' AoE (up from 5').
3. Protection from Magical Weapons protects up to +9 weapons (used to be only +5; reserving +10 for certain weapons that should go through it).
4. HLAs can become regular spellcasting again via a new settings.ini switch (default to off).
5. Charm revisions: https://github.com/BartyMae/SR_Revised/commit/85d1c649f4fd04da302d9fd62eafda886c785e86
6. Dimension Jump gets placed in Sorcerous Sundries for EE games (as Beamdog removed the original Dimension Door scroll from this store).
7. Dominated creatures can no longer be charmed to have the domination reverted...but can still be dominated to get control back.
8. There is an additional settings.ini option to enable Chant being used from range instead of auto-targeting the caster (unknown interaction with SCS, needs testing, default to off).
9. A new settings.ini option allows anti-magic spells to always pierce through improved invisibility without the need to use Detect Invisibility/True Seeing - for those who want to be able to simplify mage battles some (default to off).
10. Dispel Magic gets the same modularity as Remove Magic in settings.ini (default to original behavior).
11. The spell "Chaos" is restorable over Waves of Fatigue in settings.ini (default to off).
12. Blade Barrier and Globe of Blades no longer allow each other to be cast at the same time (...if you disagree with this change, let me know, because I've waffled back and forth on it for forever now).
13. Somewhat nerfed Prismatic Mantle (-2 saving throws instead of -4, damage down to 6D6 instead of 10D6).

The install order recommendation has changed mildly for IRR users - the readme (and original post) now recommend to install the IRR secondary components before SCS.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Lianos]

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Honestly, I didn't even know enemy spellcasters ever used it.

It's not a sexy spell atm.

An idea I would like to share:

Instead of making yet another disabler, simulate stupidness:

• High chance of casting failure (or even disable casting)
• Make quickslots and skills unavailable
• Chance of falling to the ground when moving around (--> Grease)
• Chance of hitting self when attacking an enemy
• Chance of dropping the weapon in the main hand when attacking (maybe too much for the AI)
• ...

The spell could have a save and starts with high probabilities for failures which will decrease over time (fades out completely).

or

The spell has no save, probabilities are low and will increase over time until cured (this maintains the permanent nature of the spell).

 

[Bartimaeus]

10 hours ago, Lianos said:

It's not a sexy spell atm.

An idea I would like to share:

Instead of making yet another disabler, simulate stupidness:

• High chance of casting failure (or even disable casting)
• Make quickslots and skills unavailable
• Chance of falling to the ground when moving around (--> Grease)
• Chance of hitting self when attacking an enemy
• Chance of dropping the weapon in the main hand when attacking (maybe too much for the AI)
• ...

The spell could have a save and starts with high probabilities for failures which will decrease over time (fades out completely).

or

The spell has no save, probabilities are low and will increase over time until cured (this maintains the permanent nature of the spell).

 

If I were designing something like this, I would have to go with something pretty extreme, I think. The spell has to be worth the slot for both players and AI, otherwise what's the point? So I'd probably do...

1. Disable spellcasting (but perhaps not innate abilities?).
2. Reduce ApR by somewhere between 1 and 2.
3. Reduce movement speed, or random falling down?
4. ...Something else?

Weapon-dropping's unfortunately pretty much always a bad idea due the possibility of dropping a weapon and not noticing it and the weapon getting deleted by the ground-cleaning script, plus the AI can't react to it. I'm not sure that hitting yourself can be done. No player would ever use a feeblemindedness spell if the effects were "weak but permanent", since enemies don't last beyond the current encounter.

[Lianos]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

No player would ever use a feeblemindedness spell if the effects were "weak but permanent", since enemies don't last beyond the current encounter.

Good point.

[FixTesteR]

23 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Protection from Magical Weapons protects up to +9 weapons

Does this include Protection from Normal Weapons? I hope it doesn't because I'd still like the game to be viable to be played with a party heavy on Fighters that can't dispell protections. I'm asking this because a while ago there was a discussion about whether +0 weapons should be included. If your answer is "yes, they are included", is there an easy way to revert this on my part? I'm not a modder.

 

23 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Dispel Magic gets the same modularity as Remove Magic in settings.ini (default to original behavior).

What do you mean by modularity? Does it work as in vanilla now? Spell Revisions makes DM work the same as RM, and removes RM altogether. Do you add it back in SRR?

 

23 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The spell "Chaos" is restorable over Waves of Fatigue in settings.ini (default to off).

Over? Does it overwrite WoF in the files, so that in every place one would previously find scrolls of WoF, there is now Chaos?

 

Thank you.

 

PS:

Not sure of the extent to which you modified Charm (I checked the link), but my version right now says that Charm has a ST of +2 while Dire Charm has +0. Both of these seem kinda useless, seing that ST vs spells are usually the lowest among enemies. I am willing to be schooled on this subject, though, if I'm really seeing it wrong.

Edited October 11, 2021 by FixTesteR
Had to add more.

[Hubal]

Latest SRR Installed with warnings

WARNING: no effects altered on sppr407.spl
WARNING: no effects altered on sppr522.spl
WARNING: no effects altered on spwi512.spl

What are those spells?

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

Does this include Protection from Normal Weapons? I hope it doesn't because I'd still like the game to be viable to be played with a party heavy on Fighters that can't dispell protections. I'm asking this because a while ago there was a discussion about whether +0 weapons should be included. If your answer is "yes, they are included", is there an easy way to revert this on my part? I'm not a modder.

No, that's not changed - unenchanted weapons pierce through Protection from Magical Weapons. Sorry for the confusion!

3 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

What do you mean by modularity? Does it work as in vanilla now? Spell Revisions makes DM work the same as RM, and removes RM altogether. Do you add it back in SRR?

SRR has differentiated between Remove Magic and Dispel Magic for a long while, in that Dispel Magic is 30' but targets both friendlies and enemies, while Remove Magic is 20' but targets only enemies. However, this patch note specifically refers to Remove Magic's two alternative implementations that can be enabled that change exactly how they dispel (one of them is by a scaling saving throw penalty instead of the level vs. level percentage system; another is a sort of lesser Breach system) - now the same options are enabled for Dispel Magic.

3 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

Over? Does it overwrite WoF in the files, so that in every place one would previously find scrolls of WoF, there is now Chaos?

Correct - in SR, Waves of Fatigue has overwritten Chaos for many years, and that particular spell has been a thorn in my side for many years due to a lack of a way to really implement it in a useful fashion for both AI and players, so now there is an option (though it's not enabled by default) to instead have Chaos, which is essentially just a Greater Confusion. Chaos is a pretty stupid spell IMO, but at least it's useful for both the AI and players.

3 hours ago, FixTesteR said:

Not sure of the extent to which you modified Charm (I checked the link), but my version right now says that Charm has a ST of +2 while Dire Charm has +0. Both of these seem kinda useless, seing that ST vs spells are usually the lowest among enemies. I am willing to be schooled on this subject, though, if I'm really seeing it wrong.

Yes, except now they're much more likely to work on friendlies as per the link. Charm is a much more powerful effect in the BG games than it is intended to be in AD&D, as all sources of Charm are effectively domination effects instead of...well, charm, which would normally be "I can suggest that you do minor things to help us out", not "I suggest you drop everything and attack your own comrades". Mental Domination and Domination are the ones with the harsher saving throw penalties - use those instead.

@Hubal Harmless but unfortunate. All three of those are Protection from Electricity (yes, really, all three of them - the disabled priest version at 4th level, the enabled priest version at 5th level, and the wizard version cast by Protection from Elemental Energy). Guess I should fix that and re-release it, since having a warning for the installation every time is indeed annoying even if it is totally harmless. And I'm annoyed I didn't notice it, especially since I tested installing on BG2EE...but I just looked, and yep, it literally says right there "Installed with Warnings". Thanks.

(e): Now fixed and re-released.

Edited October 11, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[FixTesteR]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

well, charm, which would normally be "I can suggest that you do minor things to help us out"

Makes sense what you're saying but ... are there in-game examples where you could use charm to your benefit? It seems it's more of a role-play, right? Maybe BG City Chapter 7? Or do you have viable situations where a NPC is approaching you and you'd like to avert them? Just wondering.

 

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

one of them is by a scaling saving throw penalty instead of the level vs. level percentage system; another is a sort of lesser Breach system

So the bottom line is, you don't really like how Vanilla Dispel Magic works? Well, one thing I found annoying near the end of ToB was that the strong mobs always use Dispel Magic as opposed to other dispells, and it seemed that, being of a higher level than my party, have a very high chance of dispelling my whole party with one swoop. I guess Dispelling Screen helped avert the first cast, but after that, one Dispel Magic could remove all types of protections on several members that I cast before battle. Anyway, it just seemed that Dispel Magic trumps all other dispells. Hopefully you can relate at least a bit to what I'm saying here. Also, while other dispells tell me what they dispel, Dispel Magic is just very broad all around the board. I mean, what doesn't it dispel?